Appreciate information about languages and selecting IDN's in Chinese. I know that simplified Chinese is the preferred, but are there any segments of language, maybe geographic regions, food names or cities that would be a better IDN choice in traditional? Has anyone registered BOTH simplified and traditional for the same word? Thanks for the info.

Simplified Chinese is used almost uniquely and exclusively in the PRC although there is also some usage in Singapore, I believe. There does, however, seem to be some revival of traditional forms in the PRC, but their main usage is in Taiwan, Hong-Kong and the expatriate Chinese communities around the world, including a very large population in Malaysia. In the PRC it is likely that traditional forms will be used for branding and prestige. I think many cities are likely to revert to their traditional forms or these forms are likely to be adopted by private enterprise.

In terms of registrations, it was possible to register both forms orginally at Verisign but the Chinese objected strongly and likened it to registering Capital and Lower Case forms of Latin characters. It is now no longer possible to register both, but existing registrations co-exist. It should be noted that for certain things it still possible to register both forms as the characters do not map to each other. I found this to be particular true with Cities. It is interesting to note that in many cases the Google Search results are the same for each form, so the Google Algorythm makes the equivalence, much in the same way that it makes equivalence of some numerals to Latin Characters. The Indexing of words of Google is clearly a bit more complicated than just a single linear array and this complexity is only likely to increase with time.

The point is, however, if Traditional terms can give you search ranking for sites using dot CN, they are likely to be used, even if they are not as valuable as the Simplified counterparts. If the counterpart is not registered then the registrant has rights over both terms, although currently there is no way of activating that counterpart. If a counterpart drops then you stand to gain control over both versions.

If you are buying a domain in the secondary market or indeed selling, it is important to check whether the counterpart is still registered or not, as this may significantly increase the value of that domain. I have one in Traditional which means Computer, although there is another term that is more used in Traditional Chinese. It does, however, give me the rights over the Simplified Form, where this is a more current term. This greatly increases the potential value of this domain.